BL1NK
by OblivionDragon
Summary: From Mage: the Awakening. BL1NK recounts her bizarre mystery play Awakening to Acanthus. I wrote this as an exercise in dedication to a campaign I'm participating in. If someone else enjoys it, please review and let me know.


I'm posting this on fanfiction for the easy reading pleasure of my Storyteller, who is currently far away, for review. It's the first Awakening I've ever written, and I don't know if I'm on-target or not, which is in fact why I'm posting, so be gentle. It's probably a one-shot, but if I write some of Blink's history to go with it I might post a second chapter. I love this character. She's crazy. She ends up an Acanthus/ Free Council/ Transhuman Engineer, Master of Time and Forces, Gnosis 5. And her Dad is an Obrimos/Silver Ladder/ Scion of God, Gnosis 7 (Archangel). Nasty stuff.

I don't own World of Darkness/Mage: the Awakening or profit from White Wolf's stuff. Bummer.

The Awakening of Takayama Tenshiko

As much as I have since abandoned the study of the Fate Arcanum for that of the flashier talents, not a day goes by when I do not thank Fate for putting me on that train. I only wish I could thank her to her face, but not even I can deal so carelessly with a Sleeper.

Even if she is my mother.

Now that I have you hooked (and myself committed,) maybe I should back up. I was born and raised on the outskirts of Nagasaki. As far as I knew, my father was some kind of investor with the occasional odd client by a generally boring career that he rarely mentioned. He was the picture of a dutiful husband and father, even if he was often distant.

The only truly strange thing I could have told anyone about my father was that he was Christian, though he had had some kind of falling out with the small Christian community in Nagasaki and thus practiced alone.

He was a genius and could often be found writing in his study. When I sked him why he only wrote in Latin, even when he seemed to be penning a letter, he fumbled before reasoning that he didn't know English and the recipient couldn't read Japanese. When I asked about his books- for he wrote whole Encyclopedias' worth (of serial oratories and treatises I know now) he just mumbled something about disbelief and not upsetting my mother. The first was a lie, I knew it even then. The second… I'm not so sure.

My mom is awesome, especially for a Sleeper. People say I look just like her with her small stature and sharp features. Her hair is graying and she curls it now, but were it more similar to my own I suspect I would resemble her closely.

She is a great mom, warm and vibrant and funny. I'll never know how prim, stubborn, distant Dad made himself a catch like her. She swears up and down that it wasn't arranged. Though she also swore she'd convert.

Right.

My mother is probably the only Shintoist alive who could be described as passionate. She maintains several shrines around the house and no matter where I go or how I hide, a package of luck charms always reaches me on my birthday. I wonder if there isn't an Awakened out there who enchants the postage so her love reaches her wayward daughter.

Subtle effects aren't my forte, but I always try to send a little luck with my annual letter. I hope she never needs it.

I suppose I should also mention that I have an older sister. Junshin is a prosecution attorney eight years my senior, and a pretty grim Buddhist to boot. We have never been close. She is smart and stern but very sly; she could lie circles around any con artist if she put her mind to it. I have not heard from her since my departure. I have no doubt she disapproves of my actions.

So that's my family, in Sleeper terms anyway. When I turned fifteen I Awakened to the truth. Grab some popcorn, kids, this one's not short.

For my birthday my mom planned a trip for me weeks in advance. I had asked to be allowed to go to Tokyo so I could see Shinjuku and Akihabara. I wanted to experience the modern techno-culture I secretly coveted and lose myself in the massive crowds that were nonexistent in our quiet, suburban life.

My father adamantly disapproved, and my mother loudly insisted that I instead visit some famous shrines with her. Dad didn't seem any more pleased with this course of action, but eventually relented.

When we got to the train station and she handed me my ticket, I think I screamed. May any spirits she believes in bless her, my mother gave her obnoxious, screaming banshee of a daughter the one thing she wanted most- tickets to Tokyo.

She thrust a whole folder of stuff into my hands: my round-trip train tickets, subway passes, hotel confirmation numbers, any phone number I could possibly want, enough yen to have a great weekend (but not enough to get into too much trouble), and my very own _keitai_

Nothing made me happier than that little phone with the tiny wooden luck charm dangling from the antenna.

So as I shrieked and jumped and hugged and thanked her, sh somehow conveyed to me that I was to call her brother, who lived in Yokohama, if I needed anything, and to have fun as she shoved me on the right train, waving goodbye.

Retrospectively I realize that she was going on the trip to the shrines she had planned for "us," probably to pray for my safe return and to collect the appropriate souvenirs to cover for us. At the time all that mattered to me was my weekend of freedom and the words she left me with as the door closed: "Don't worry, sweetheart. Where you're going will get you."

Creepy, huh? I know what you're thinking, and no matter how many times I think it over, that's still what I heard. Not "You'll get where you're going." Definitely "Where you're going will get you."

The reason I have been relating all of these amusing but mundane events is simple. I couldn't tell you when I began to Awaken. I just don't know. There was no sign in the train station that said "You're Awakening Starts Here!"

Soon afterward I would have said it probably started that evening, ten hours away. But now I think it must have already been happening by the time my train slid away from the platform and into the ominously clouded morning. Even as my new phone chimed happily and delivered my very first text message, I thought of how clever my mom must be, getting us both phones so she can simultaneously set me loose on Tokyo and keep track of me; how modern she was becoming, figuring out the difficult kanji-selection function to finish the comment ct off by the train doors.

"Where you're going will get you," she had said.

And then displayed on the tiny, backlit screen: "Don't let time lose track of you."

My mother never got herself a phone. She couldn't so much as answer mine while I showered until I showed her how. Twice. And in that underground train terminal, there is no service.

Weird.

The train races toward Tokyo, and before I know it, I'm there. Literally. It must have been hours, but I didn't have time to _do _anything. The next moment I washed up on the train platform, carried by the surge of people leaving the locomotive.

Everything raced by me as I stood on the platform, my excitement mounting. I was _in _Tokyo. I was in _Tokyo_I had expected to be tired from the trip, but instead I was wired. Heh, wired. So I bounded down the street to my hotel, checked in, ditched my suitcase, and bolted back out into the evening city.

I don't remember looking at the subway maps. I just bolted onto whatever train took my fancy at the time, seeming to outpace everyone and everything around me. A journey through the underground from Shinjuku to Akihabara which would later confuse the hell out of me seemed to just… happen. And the subway rides seemed abbreviated, like on the train. I remember feeling as if I were chasing something, but I didn't know what. And then I was there.

I remember being astonished at how bright it was. The LED screens and halogen lights lit the streets up like a stadium, blinking and flashing in so many colors.

The sky, which I have since known to be filled with such lights from the streets and buildings below, was pitch black. A dark, roiling surface of clouds the likes of which I have never seen before or since.

And there was _lightning._

It was the lightning that alerted me that something extraordinary was happening. I bustled quickly up the streets, seemingly moving faster than anything around me. But I paused several times to gawk at the sky- which no one seemed to think was interesting- and was immediately swamped by wave after wave of people who seemed to walk, speak, and _live _at apace far beyond my own.

Weird. Magical, even.

Not entirely comprehending that the flow of time was somehow dependent on my relative speed, I attributed this effect to my massive excitement-induced adrenaline rush. So, praise my high school track team, I ran.

I don't know if anyone noticed the whirl of adrenaline-high teenager rushing past them in the throes of Awakening. If they did I must have been a sight, dashing in every direction at once and laughing all the way.

I frolicked in this odd state for a while. I changed my look while I was at it- tall black gogo boots, a short black pleather skirt, a shiny lime green tanktop, and a black pleather jacket later I left my original outfit in a dumpster. I got my long braid hacked off into the short, angular style I still prefer, with a stripe down the middle bleached and dyed lime green and spiked into a mohawk. I wish I could remember that salon…

As a rebellious afterthought I covered my neck and arms in belts, buckles, and studded straps. I had a row of barbells punched around the outside of each ear, and this is also when I got my tattoo. The silver open-faced pocket-watch with long, narrow wings for hands that graces my back is an homage to the moments that zipped and seized around me that evening, I suppose.

After that I just wandered. My wanderings were simultaneously hurried, aimless and thrilling. I barely even noticed the people around me anymore; they just faded into a blur of anonymous color and chatter. But everything else was so vivid, and I wanted to see all of it. Every new fashion, every manga, every video game, and every electronic gizmo held fascination for me, but they still weren't my quarry. I still felt that I was chasing something.

The lightning was incredible. Flash after flash lit the roiling black sky with jagged branches of white. Something caught my eye as I stopped to admire one bright explosion of light. It was a sort of light itself, but just a twinkle. Like a "notice me!" shiny in a video game, only it was moving.

First it appeared on an advertisement poster- for some mech show, I think. It headed towards a closed maid café, then disappeared. When I reached that street corner and stopped to look around, I saw it again, briefly, out of the corner of my eye. It was diving behind a vending machine across the street. I sprinted after it, as if it were the fifty meters at a meet, only to have it reappear somewhere else.

I followed it that way for hours upon hours, it seemed. Time continued its strange game of cat-and-mouse with me, as I in turn preyed on the strange, fey clue. As I stopped I always caught a glimpse of it, but when I had broken into my sprint it always vanished.

Now, I'm not the brightest pixel in the screen for letting this continue, but never could I be described as patient. So I stopped.

And then I started again. Stopped. Started. You get the idea. A meter at a time I made the damn light show lead me to my destination. Clever girl that I am.

It was awe-inspiring. It stood on a concrete wedge too awkward to pave and too small to build on, surrounded by what seemed to be a nest of thorned vines, which wound up the structure in a twisted spiral of razor-sharp barbs. But was it beautiful to me.

Bright silver shards were set into a silvery frame, reflecting and refracting the lightning that made it positively luminescent, casting watery sparkles- like the one I had chased- in every direction.

And reflected in the shards which composed the glittering tower of metal and glass, were names. String upon string of kanji, letter upon letter of ever language, it seemed, cluttered the gleaming surfaces with every manner of name.

High above me I could see the dark shape of one yet-unmarked shard.

I had to get my name up there.

But how?

It was at least three meters above me, and no matter how good of a climber I was, there was no way I cold negotiate the twisting brambles without shredding myself. I was finding my guiding force to be quite fickle indeed.

Well, it would find me fickle too.

Mirrors reflect light, right?

I immediately whipped out my cell phone and started a text message. I carefully typed my name on the small keypad, selecting the correct kanji as I went. I knew this had to be right.

Then I rifled through my shoulder bag for my eye-shadow compact. Feeling very smug, I shone my phone's screen at the small mirror and the mirror up at the structure above me. It took a few adjustments, but within seconds my name was emblazoned down the fragment of metal and glass.

_Takayama__ Tenshiko_

And then I was Awake.

I grinned up at the tiny text of my name as put my mirror away.

I dashed back into the streets of Akihabara the happiest person alive. And with a new perspective, I re-read my first text message.

"Don't let time lose track of you."

Mastering my features into a smug smirk, which immediately split back into a full grin, I slowed. As I eased into a walk, the slow mumble of the world around me sped to catch up, and I only barely outpaced the forgotten pedestrians around me by the spring in my step.

The resulting synchronicity very nearly clicked into place. Suddenly the lights of the Tokyo again reached the clouds above, and I no longer felt like Destiny was guiding my steps. Later I would get very lost trying to find my way back to my hotel, unused to the massive subway system. Upon inquiring about the tower covered in thorns, the puzzled concierge would dig up a tourist brochure featuring a picture of the ugliest piece of modern art I have ever seen, a crooked frame of steel bars welded around pieces of shattered mirrors, wrapped from base to point with rusty barbed wire. And it would take me years to retrace my impressive, crazed route through the city to find out just where I'd been.

But I was Awakened, to Acanthus, the Tower of the Lunargent Thorn. Nothing else mattered.

When I returned to the Nagasaki train station to meet my mother, I hadn't slept since I left her three days previously. Seeing me get off the train dressed like a freak, sleep deprived, and wearing the silliest, most manic grin ever, she laughed and called me a fool.

Not a fool, Mom, _the _Fool. I wouldn't have it any other way. I can never thank you enough for putting me on that train, even if I can never tell you why.

Because to be Awake is to be free.

I fear I will always be a fool, and never regret being so. I have joined a Legacy, the Transhuman Engineers, I have mastered the Forces and Time Arcana, I have raged and reeled and run through my life like I did through my Awakening. My silly grin may have twisted into a manic sneer, and my own hands may betray me for a moment of desperation, but I was your fool daughter before I ever became this brazen renegade.

I have heard a well-placed rumor that Junshin is beginning to Sleepwalk. Every Consilium I have come across is on the lookout for me, courtesy of Dad's many strings. It seems he has pulled all of them, this time. I hope he can remember why he wants me back. Even the Guardians of the Veil are catching up to me. I suppose it's about the New York incident. But the strength of the backlash only verifies the strength of my spell. As if they can stop me when I've decided it's worth it…

I have a Shadowname: _Blink. _It's more of a dare than anything else. I've found some friends now, my cabal, and I don't think they will let me down so easily. They will understand. I have to do this before we end the world.

**I'm coming home. **

**And now that I am strong enough, my bridges _will _burn.**


End file.
